u/Deep-Raisin1126

My mod manager used to wear whichever game you had open, which meant the Medieval chrome only existed while you were actually looking at Medieval. Now you pick the look in settings and it stays, so you can go sort out a Sims 4 folder in parchment and brass if you feel like it.

It is two materials rather than one. By daylight it is the ambition book and the build catalogue: parchment, a thin brass line, brown ink. After dark it is the live HUD, the same chrome carved out of dark wood with cream lettering. Both are in the game a screen apart, so neither one is a compromise.

The Medieval support itself has not changed. It finds the install even when the disc folder name is in another language, it scaffolds the Resource.cfg pointing at Mods/Packages, and it tells you when the d3dx9 proxy is missing so you are not sitting there wondering why a script mod is doing nothing. CC works without the proxy, script and core mods do not, and nothing in the app makes that obvious except saying so.

Free, no account, Windows Mac and Linux. Link in the comments.

I added the SimCity games this week, and SimCity 3000 turns out to be from the year before The Sims, so the sidebar now runs across fifteen years of Maxis in one window.

The TS1 side has not changed and still does the sorting nothing else bothers with. Objects and .far go to Downloads. Skins go to GameData\Skins, with buyable clothing routed on to SkinsBuy based on the L/S/W/H/F mesh name prefixes. Walls and floors go to their own folders. If a zip names its own folders inside, it honours those instead, since the readme had to say so anyway. Or you override the lot and send everything to Downloads if that is how you keep things.

It finds the game even when it is not where the launcher put it, including disc copies with translated folder names, and it will go looking through Steam libraries and drive roots if none of the usual paths exist. The classic UI sounds are in there too if you want them, and the TS1 look is chunky chiselled blue like the neighbourhood screen.

Free, no account, Windows Mac and Linux. Link in the comments.

This came out of people asking why a download was not showing up in game. In the little shop inside the mod manager I make, whoever uploads something can tick which packs it was built for, and the app checks that against what you actually own before you install.

It is always a warning and never a block, on purpose. Two of the Sims games keep their pack list in the Windows registry, so the question cannot even be answered on a Mac. A listing can name a game you have never opened. And people tick the wrong box sometimes. Something you can walk past is the only honest version of it.

The rest of the app is the usual: it pulls the real preview out of your .package files so the shelf looks like your CC instead of a wall of file names, one click disables something rather than deleting it, and it flags when two things are overwriting the same resource so you can tell a deliberate override from an accident.

Covers The Sims 1 through 4 and Medieval, plus the SimCity games as of this week. Free, no account, Windows Mac and Linux. Link in the comments.

This is the thing I see people get caught by most. You download a lot or a household, drop the files into Mods with everything else, and the game just never looks at them. The file is right there, it looks installed, nothing happens.

The mod manager I make has a Creations screen now. You drop the tray files, or the zip they came in, and it files them into Tray where the game actually reads them. Then it shows you the picture the game made of the thing instead of a row of 0x1A2B file names, which is how you actually recognise a house.

Lots, rooms, households and single Sims. The portraits in a household set are named after the Sim rather than the item, so it reads the ids out of the metadata to match them up, which means deleting a household does not leave orphan pictures behind in your Tray.

It does the ordinary mods too: real thumbnails pulled out of the .package files, one click to disable something instead of deleting it, and a warning when two mods overwrite the same resource. Free, no account, Windows Mac and Linux. Link in the comments.

It started as a Sims mod manager and now handles SimCity 3000, SimCity 4, Societies and the 2013 one as well. Each of them keeps content somewhere different and I tried to respect that rather than dump everything into one pile.

SimCity 4 got most of the work. It reads both Plugins folders, the one in Documents and the one in the install. It does not touch your load order: the numbered folders a download arrives in are the order the game loads things, so nothing gets flattened, renamed or sorted. A .dll goes to the top level of Plugins because that is the only place the game reads one, and its .ini follows it around and gets deleted with it, without ever showing up as a mod of its own.

If you use sc4pac, it reads the lock file and leaves every package sc4pac manages alone. On my install that is 777 plugins it will not touch. I found that one the hard way. Without the check, the two symlinked cheat DLLs showed up twice, and the duplicate scanner would happily have offered to delete files sc4pac still had on its books.

SimCity 3000 keeps custom buildings in a folder that is flat, so a file that ends up in a subfolder there is silently never loaded, and the app says so instead of letting it look installed. Societies takes .SCSPack content into the Import folder its own installer uses. The 2013 one reads SimCityUserData inside the install, which sits under Program Files, so Windows may ask for admin rights.

Free, no account, Windows Mac and Linux. It is early on the SimCity side so I would rather hear what it gets wrong than not. Link in the comments.

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Free app, Windows Mac and Linux, it manages mods for Sims 1 through 4 and Medieval. The TS1 side is the part I've spent the most time on. It finds the game even when it isn't where the launcher put it, second drives and custom Steam libraries included, and it routes an install the way the old guides tell you to do it by hand: objects and .far into Downloads, skins into GameData/Skins, buyable clothing into ExpansionShared/SkinsBuy, walls and floors into their own folders.

New version has a shop inside the app, with a Sims 1 shelf. One click and the file lands in whichever of those folders it belongs in.

The reason I built that half is the creators. Anyone who has gone looking for TS1 content knows how it goes: the site is gone, the journal is deleted, the download is a dead MediaFire link, and the only copy left is a reupload with the name stripped off. A listing is a page with the creator's name on it, their own description and install notes, a link that keeps working, and a way to push a new version that actually reaches the people who installed the old one. Free to publish, no cut, no ads.

It's an alpha, so that shelf is nearly empty. If you make things for this game I'd love to see them on it.

Link in a comment.

Posted here a few days back about the mod manager I make. Short version for anyone who missed it: free app for Windows, Mac and Linux, it handles the Mods folder for Sims 1 through 4 and Medieval. For Medieval it finds the install by looking for Game/Bin/TSM.exe rather than the folder name, because disc copies come named in whatever language they were sold in, and it writes the Resource.cfg and Mods/Packages if you don't have them yet.

Back this soon because the new version puts a shop inside the app. Browse it, install in one click, the file goes where it belongs.

The half I care more about is the creator side. Every listing gets its own page with the creator's name on it, their description and their install notes, and a link that works for anyone whether or not they have the app. Publishing is free, there's no cut and no ads. And when you upload a new version, everyone who installed it gets an Update badge, instead of finding out six months later they've been running the broken one. The credit stays attached to the thing, which is more than a reupload on a dead forum thread ever managed.

Honest about the state of it: alpha, and Medieval is by far the thinnest shelf, which is a bit chicken and egg. If any of you still make things for this game, that's the shelf I'd most like to see fill up.

Link in a comment.